[TLDR (too long didn’t read): This Reader is about how human rights get schortschrift from both sides of the aisle. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text].
1. ‘The dominant ideology is always the ideology of the dominant class’ –already a century-and-a-half ago did Marx and Engels warn us. The concept is still 100% valid today. Since Capitalism is based on the exploitation of the workers, it bends over backwards to make it impossible for the exploited to react even to defend their fundamental human rights (HR). This is what we call class struggle. Capitalism does not let anything slip through any opportunity to keep the working class’s alternative liberating paths at bay —most of anything, any socialist alternative. Capitalism has shown this zillions of times thus not offering real solutions to the grand problems of humanity. We ought never overlook the fact that, for 15% of the world’s population to live a life at ease (with access to shopping centers), the other 85% suffers anguish and deprivation. That is the Capitalist system.
2. Hegemonic ideologies have the capacity to force on people what they stand for. This capacity is the one that global hegemonic neoliberalism has now lost. Neoliberalism has lost its force to generate enthusiasm, to attract lasting adherents, to promise feasible future horizons. What we have, is an increasingly authoritarian., repressive* neoliberalism trying to entrench itself as its force and popularity rapidly vanishes. (Alvaro Garcia Linera)
*: These days, a loaded pistol could give you more individual guarantees than any Constitution and the laws that purportedly defend justice. We have to understand this before it is too late. (Raúl Sendic)
3. In George Orwell’s words, totalitarianism is a political order centered around power and control.** The totalitarian idea is that the law does not exist –only power exists; in other words, laws limit the power of those who govern. Totalitarianism tries to erase the limits of the law through the uninhibited exercise of power. Totalitarianism is thus forced to deny the objective truth. Those that oppose totalitarianism, go beyond just seeking economic justice, but also seek social and political justice.
**: Fascism is the anathema of totalitarianism. But these days it is no longer even a half-way reasoned philosophy. Today’s ‘neo’ versions of fascism are a response to an anti-politics stand and include election deniers, hate for sovereign governments, anti-vaxxers, racists, antifeminists, homophobes, anti-abortionists… Get rid of your masks! Get out of the closet! Just say: “I am a fascist, so what?” (Jose Steinsleger)
There is no democracy without political parties
4. Yes but: Political parties without a social base do not really have militants, but rather hostage members who often owe some favor to someone in the hierarchy. These parties thus resemble feuds heavily based on the traffic of influences loyal to the leaders of the party. This is the political structure, I daresay, that is legislating these days, that pretends the party-members-in-positions-of-influence are internally democratically elected, that give these elite members powers beyond the will of the bases. So, effectively, these characters can and do go with what the market calls for, with money influence(rs) that can finance their reelection campaigns, or go with the higher powers they want to please. Bottom line who pays the consequences of this? The people! (Louis Casado)
5. The Left breaking up into smaller groups or parties is not an exclusive happening in any given country; it has rather been a historical constant in many countries. Today, those that claim to represent the people are found everywhere, but particularly in the Left that speaks (but does not do?) in the name of the people –and of HR.*** At the end of the day, the existence of so many parties that call themselves being from the Left, and being guardians of the Left’s principles (or being the True Left), only contributes to bring about more dispersion so that, at the end, there is no more Left. (Fernando Ayala) So much for the hope of socialism?
***: It is educational to remember that the fascism of Mussolini in Italy started by claiming that its ideas were neither from the Left nor from the Right.
You cannot be from the Left if you do not struggle against a socioeconomic system that puts profit and exploitation at the center of the human economy to the point of endangering the future of our species
6. Anybody who does not repudiate, the economic and military domination of a handful of nations and their violating of HR with impunity cannot call her/himself a leftwing activist. What this means is that being truly politically leftwing is actually being anticapitalist, antiimperialist, antimilitarist, ecomilitant and a HR activist. (Oskar Lafontaine)
7. What remains on the other side is rightwing –even if you call it ‘green’ or ‘socialist’****, but without the preceding leftwing attributes. As for the main forces of the Right, they are also badly divided –yet not in crisis. (O. Lafontaine) –and as for the main forces of the Left, they have done far too little to build a renewed (?) relationship with academia and with intellectuals, without trying to arrogantly coopt them. (Esteban Valenti)
****: There is much, very much, missing in socialism to be truly committed to fairness and social justice. Maybe, at the end, it will not even be called socialism, because it has/will become a hybrid that does not consider Capitalism the true cancer. (Silvio Rodríguez)
Whoever praises consensus is trying to cheat us (Regis Debray)
8. Talking about cancers, seeking consensus is the cancer of public and political affairs since it compromises our values when pursuing solutions, including on HR. Opinion polling is an industry that precisely seeks to create consensus. Consensus then becomes a superstition and an argument used by ‘the authority’. But, in reality, it seriously risks subverting the democratic ideal. A consensual society is a dead society; consensus is a societal function to foster status-quo; by its nature, it pursues order –but the order of the stronger who have built the consensus in the first place. What we are here for in the HR space is precisely to break that consensus and have the traditional for-ever-losers …win. (R. Debray)
9. How much should we/you be side-by-side with anti-capitalist groups/movements/parties all the time, including on the street whenever necessary since the street is the only place where HR changes can start to happen? (Alison Katz)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com
Postscript/Marginalia
-It is not politics that makes a candidate become a thief; it is your vote that makes a thief become a politician. (graffiti in Santiago, Chile) …Talk about the profitable dividends of politics… (Juan P. Cardenas)
-Monkeys only speak to monkeys: We reach the lowest intellectual electoral level when the candidates only speak about other candidates, no mention of program, of ideas, of purpose, of the design aimed-at for society. (L. Casado)